Planning f23 rebuild

My plan is the pull the motor this winter and rebuild it. Nothing crazy. I just want factory performance and factory RELIABILITY. I don't care for high numbers. The only high number I care about is my gas mileage.

I figure new bearings, piston rings, all new deals and gaskets. Besides the timing cover. It has all new gaskets and seals. New water pump and oil pump. The timing belt was changed a few months ago. Brand new gates.

The motor currently has 214k miles. Do you guys think I need to rebuild the head? Right now it runs great and strong. Just leaks a little oil here and there.

I just want a reliable motor to drive to work everyday. I'll be driving 45 minutes one way every day.

your gonna go broke quick. take the engine to a machine shop and get them to spec it out to see wether you need over size or stock size bearings. the head they can vacuum check and see if it needs rebuilding. i would throw new valve seals in it while the heads off.

re ring / hone bore, new main bearings, new rod bearings. and then gotta make shure you break in the engine correctly afterwords asewell.


If i where you. i would just re gasket it it and rock it. alsong as it isnt burning oil and your compression is good. dont go messing with it

Looking into it further I think I'll just get a full gAsket kit from to rock auto and rock it. Maybe do a little home smith port and polish lol

dawg316 said:

your gonna go broke quick.
If i where you. i would just re gasket it it and rock it. alsong as it isnt burning oil and your compression is good. dont go messing with it

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Yup, as long as it's not burning oil you should be fine. Just watch the oil level between changes though, so that you know when it starts consuming it. When you get to the point of having to add a quart every 1500 miles, that's when you look into rebuilding versus finding a low mileage replacement. The pull it when you're ready and fix it (with either rebuilt, or a swap).

Well with my driving. It eats about a quart every 2k miles.

I really wanna pull the motor. Regasket the motor and clean the intake manifold out so its like new. There is probably a few pounds of carbon/oil build up from the PCV system caked on the whole interior. Maybe do a mild port and polish. I guess I'm ok with a quart every 2k miles. That's not bad actually.

Revving to 5-6k rpm regularly will eat oil.

Nam1911a1 said:

My plan is the pull the motor this winter and rebuild it. Nothing crazy. I just want factory performance and factory RELIABILITY. I don't care for high numbers. The only high number I care about is my gas mileage.

I figure new bearings, piston rings, all new deals and gaskets. Besides the timing cover. It has all new gaskets and seals. New water pump and oil pump. The timing belt was changed a few months ago. Brand new gates.

The motor currently has 214k miles. Do you guys think I need to rebuild the head? Right now it runs great and strong. Just leaks a little oil here and there.

I just want a reliable motor to drive to work everyday. I'll be driving 45 minutes one way every day.

Click to expand...

Personally....

Grab a spare motor to use for tear down and rebuild. Creates less down time for you should something go wrong or take longer than expected. That's what I'm doing with my wrx at the moment.

Tear the block down to the bare essentials, send the block, crank, and rods out to be cleaned and inspected. Tell them you want a slight overbore to square the cylinders and a hone. The machine shop can tell you how far overbore you'll need to go and then you or them can spec your pistons from there.

Bearings, you can measure them individually or just use all OEM Green bearings, they're right smack in the middle as far as clearances go. You'll need plastigauge to determine the proper clearance if thats how you want go.

I don't care for downtime. I have two vehicles and in the winter I like to drive my 2007 Tundra 5.7 v8 4x4.

The drifts baby...the drifts.

I'll think about the machine shop. I want to spend as little money as possible.

Ok so driving around town my car does not consume much oil. But driving to work at Toyota and back now is eating more oil as I am cruising around 80-85 mph at around 3000-3200 rpm. This maintained high cruising rpm is eating a quart of oil in 250 miles. I added a quart of Lucas to it this morning before work. I'm hoping bad valve seals is all it is. My friend did say he saw smoke coming out my tailpipe. I hope it isn't piston rings.

Damn that's a lot, but no different than my old Hyundai accent.
Ran fine for years consuming just as much oil as yours (and not leaking a drop); just keep it full and it'll keep running. People tailgated a lot less back in the days when I had a blue cloud following me.

Usually valve guides go first, so it's probably just that, which isn't actually that bad to fix.

If it were me, and it turned out to be rings, I'd just pick up a used motor for a few hundred bucks and swap it; then you can take your time and rebuild the one that's in there without being stuck without wheels while you're doing it. I honestly wouldn't bother; just the machine shop work is going to cost you more than a used engine, and whatever else you find that's worn out is going to be on top of that.

Just throw the old one out (you'll probably get $30-50 back in scrap for it if you bring it to a metal recycler); used F23A4 motors are a few hundred bucks all day long at the scrapyards around here. You won't save any money rebuilding it over just replacing it.

Not to mention you can swap it in a day, you're going to spend more time and money if you decide to rebuild it.

My main goal of rebuilding is to have a reliable car to drive to work for the next 20-30 years. Buying a used motor is a dice roll on how the previous owner maintained the motor.

I'm looking at the long term. Not short term. Also I like building things.